Camden County College says goodbye to its 1,715 graduates

View full size(Staff Photo by Tim Hawk/Gloucester County Times)Wendy Gallagher, 43yo, from Swedesboro (left) and Staci Farmer, 21, from Pine Hill talk to classmates before Camden County College 44th Annual Commencement May 19, 2012.

GLOUCESTER TWP. -- With several Gloucester County dignitaries in attendance, Camden County College’s graduation ceremony was a busy one as family and friends came out to support the 1,715 new graduates of the college on Saturday.

Outside, on a beautiful Saturday morning, parents got to watch their children turn their tassels and turn the page on the next part of their lives at the college’s 44th annual commencement.

“My advice to you is to take it, hold onto it and fly,” said Menendez about the graduates’ newly earned degrees.

But as parents got to hug their children who look to enter the professional workforce for the first time, some as young as 17 years old graduating on Saturday, one graduate embodies the ceremony’s spirit of new opportunities.

Wendy Gallagher worked in the oil industry for thirteen years, expecting to work for the Sunoco Eagle Point Oil Refinery until she retired like so many others with the typical American dream.

However, the company laid her off in 2010 and she had to make a choice when it came to her career. When she realized she could do much more with her life, she decided to go back to school and majored in History, hoping to become a government liaison to help human trafficking victims.

Now, at the age of 43, the Swedesboro native is just like any other college graduate, with an entirely new opportunity ahead of her. Graduating with a 3.93 GPA and a member of the college’s Honors Program, Gallagher has dreams of Washington D.C. and the United Nations racing around her head just like any other newer, younger graduate with high-reaching dreams and aspirations.

But even as she admitted she didn’t know what college was going to be like going back as an older student, “I didn’t know if I’d be able to keep up with the younger crowd,” said Gallagher, she still speaks with the optimism of any of her younger former classmates.

“It would be a day of excitement,” said Gallagher about her graduation day. “At the same time, I’m sad.”

“When I was younger, I never tried,” said Gallagher who reiterated she had expected the Sunoco Eagle Point Oil Refinery to be her last job.

“I think this is the opportunity of a lifetime,” said Gallagher.

And as Gallagher smiled from cheek to cheek, saying that all of her classmates have the exact opportunity she does, the Student Address from Jessica Bogie best explained the attitude that Gallagher and the new graduates all share.

“Our presence under this tent today shows that we understand the meaning of hard work. We did not come from families with trust funds. We are the middle class. The working class. And that’s what makes us the poster children for the American dream,” said Bogie.